 Welcome to the second day of the orientation workshop. I'm very happy. Prasannil Sahasrabudde Chairman, AICT is here with us. Without further ado, I would like to invite all dignitaries to come on the dais and take their seats, please. Prasakannan Mangalya to escort all the dignitaries to the associate dean. The Indian tradition is to welcome guests with bouquets of flowers. But we are very environment conscious, so we don't give bouquets of flowers. Instead, we welcome our guests with small mementos. I'll request Prasakannan Mangalya to welcome each dignitary with a small memento. Prasaranil Sahasrabudde Chairman, AICT. Prasar Ravi Sinha, our dean of Alumni and Corporate Affairs could not join us. But it is due to his initiatives that we could conduct the FDP to commemorate which all of us have gathered here. Because at that time, there was some problem in the fund released by MHRD. And we could not continue holding up our teacher training workshops, which we and IIT Karakpur had been doing with the help of large number of remote centers here. I would like to briefly tell you about how these two FDPs were conceptualized and designed. The idea is that the use of information and communication technology for education is spreading, particularly in the last five to 10 years with the advent of MOOCs, FLAB classrooms, and a whole lot of other tools. And a large number of our teachers teaching in professional institutions, not only in engineering, but it is in architecture, management, and polytechnics. Many teachers are not aware how to use this technology effectively. Also, most teachers are used to conventional teaching, which involves giving lectures and conducting labs, tutorials, and exams. So they are not aware how best to use the online teaching with a blend of face-to-face interaction so that the learning becomes more effective. It is with the intention of training a large number of our teachers in these two aspects. IIT Bombay designed two faculty development programs. Luckily, Professor Anil Sastrabudde had taken over as chairman of ICT, and he immediately approved that we could run these programs. Unfortunately, at that time, as I said, funding was not available. We had teams here, but we need to spend money to both create the content and also conduct the workshop. It was at that time that the corporate social responsibility drive was on in the country. And many corporates were approaching us to find out whether they could spend this ESR money in some meaningful activities. Amongst multiple people that we were in touch with, SAP came forward. They liked this idea. And SAP actually approved a funding to meet the cost of executing, designing and executing this workshop at our end. We had invited some SAP representative here. But anyway, we then wrote to all 80,000 teachers who have been trained in the past in various workshops conducted by IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay, telling them that, look, these are important FDPs. The ICT has approved their conduct, but there is no funding. So will you be willing to participate in these FDPs as self-funded FDPs? That means there will be no TAA paid to you. For face-to-face interaction, you will have to travel at your own cost, stay at your own cost, eat food at your own cost, and additionally, the remote centers which facilitate your face-to-face interaction with IIT Bombay during the conduct of the FDP will be required to be compensated to the tune of their expenses. All of our remote centers have agreed that for an equivalent of one week of support, they would need about 1,000 rupees per participant. So we said the faculty participants will have to additionally pay 1,000 rupees to each remote center. We said they don't have to pay any fees to IIT Bombay because our expenses are being covered through some CSR grant. Many of my colleagues actually said, this is impossible. Nobody will join. Because all of our teachers are used to being funded and supported for attending any faculty development programs or workshops. You yourself have been doing it with IIT Kharagpur for the past three years. We said the feedback that we have received from the faculty in the past workshops, where we have specifically asked a question whether they will be interested in attending these workshops even at their own cost. And many had said yes. So I was very hopeful. I was very pleasantly surprised, along with all my colleagues, that over 4,000 teachers across the country registered for these FDPs. So I'm very happy to tell you that there were 4,000 people who did not mind spending money from their own pockets because they saw value in this. We organized these two FDPs. A large chunk of activity was online. The modus operandi that we followed was that for every one day of physical face-to-face interaction, where teachers would spend anywhere between six to eight hours, we said for online activity, they can do exactly the same amount of work in one calendar week, which means they can choose which six or eight hours to spend on that activity, where that activity would be online. Of course, there would be a quiz at the end of every week which they must appear for, and they must successfully clear it. So there were five weeks of such online activities for the first FDP and similar five weeks for the second FDP. That means 10 weeks of total online activity. The assessment was rigorous. There were many people who did not qualify because of the rigorous assessment, but that is in the nature of things that we do at IIT, and that is what we should do everywhere anyway. After all, even our students are not able to spend adequate time for studies, and they do fail sometimes. There were 2,100 faculty members who finally qualified going through the rigorous assessment and also participating in the face-to-face interaction at remote centers. I'm very happy that more than 120 remote centers helped us to conduct this program. We had announced as an incentive that the top 200 performers of this workshop will be given a SAP Award of Excellence of rupees 5,000. Amount of rupees 5,000 is not a very large amount, but I guess it is more than the money. It is the recognition of top performing that propelled many of our faculty members to do exceedingly well. In fact, we had a tough time just like we have in grading students. When people differ in their performance by 0.25 marks, how do you draw a line? I mean, this is a problem that is faced by all of us. We had to draw a line somewhere, so we drew a line, and that line was drawn at 253 top performers. So at 253 people, we said are eligible to receive this. However, the real top performance bottom line was defined as 360 people, because all 360 people qualified. So we gave all 360 people a certificate of excellence performance, and these 263 people, we gave an award of 5,000 rupees thanks to the SAP CSR funding. We had asked the question to all participants whether they would like to work as associate faculty for future execution of these FDPs, because we had realized while designing the course and while conducting it that such a set of two FDPs is very fundamental for every teacher. In fact, subsequently, we have been approached by the school department saying 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th standard school teachers also require exactly similar grant. We have been approached by the Skill Development Council saying why can't we use the blended technology that we have perfected to the benefit of skilling and vocational courses. We have already started offering some vocational courses online and in blended form. So you see the need and as well as our readiness is both there. And the ambition is that at least the teachers of all professional institutions falling under AICT should be trained necessarily in at least these two FDPs. The first one is effective use of ICT in education. And the second is online and blended teaching learning methods for increasing effectiveness using ICT. So we had asked one question to all the participants here, because this is the first of its kind that was conducted in the country. And if we had to train 3 lakh or 5 lakh or 10 lakh teachers in future, we would not be able to run it unless we have a large support from teams of associate faculty. Currently, we use teaching assistants for our own PhD students and tech students. But when you have to do it at a large scale, it is not possible. So we had asked this question to all participants saying if you are offered a chance of working as associate faculty with IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur for future conduct of these FDPs, would you be willing to do so? So they have all said yes. And that is another matter of pride that nobody asked any question whether they will be paid any remuneration, whether there will be any allowance or anything. They just came forward as teachers. This workshop, friends, is held to provide an orientation on how to participate as associate faculty in future FDPs. Since support from the institution will also be required, and I hope the chairman in his address mentions about what kind of mechanisms they are contemplating to ensure that. There were two main points which emerged in our discussions with our faculty members here, all of yesterday and even earlier. One is non-recognition by my own institute of the work that I'm doing, which is contributing to the national outreach. Because my own department head will say, Fadak, that is fine. You can do all that activity. But first is these courses for which you are paid salary. It is natural because that is how our system has evolved. IIT Bombay has been extremely kind. Many of us are given, without talking much about it, quietly given an allowance in our teaching load so that we can take care of this large work. But this may not happen at every institute. That is one of the reasons why we also wanted to gauge the support that various institutions will be able to give. And we invited heads of those institutions from which the teachers have performed exceedingly well and are sitting here. There were 80 such institutions. We invited heads of those institutions also to join us today. I believe about 40 of them have come here. Unfortunately, I can't recognize faces. May I request all my colleague heads of the institutions to raise their hands, please, so that, wow. It's a large number. We will have some session with them separately to find out what kind of support that they can extend. But I would like to tell all our colleague teachers who have come here and also the respected heads of the institutions that these activities cannot be limited only to these 40, 60, 80 institutions from which the top performers have come. Please remember that there are 3 lakh teachers teaching in a variety of institutions. And the message of active support and active participation must go at least to all your friends and neighboring institutional heads when you go back. With that request, I'll conclude my initial presentation. On behalf of the dean ACR, I will only say that IIT Bombay has been blessed by a huge amount of support from our alumni for past three decades and more. This very convention center where we are sitting today was constructed entirely by the alumni funding, where Victor Manages funded it. There are so many instances across the Institute. And it is not just the funding. We have annual meetings with distinguished alumni, both in the US and in India. And we have regular consultation with the alumni in various departments. They very actively participate, giving their time and advice. I often say that while giving money is very important and money is valuable, but giving time is more important because time is more valuable than money, since time is a one-way moving commodity. Money, if you give, you can earn it back. Time, if you give, you can never earn it back. It just goes. So this is what they have done. And the office of the dean ACR actually combines activities of interaction with alumni as well as interaction with the corporate world. So the SAP support has come to the office of the dean for which I'm grateful.